n2doc
n2doc's Journal
Pastor who made homophobic comments about the Orlando shooting just got deported from Botswana
Botswana has decided to deport the American pastor who became notorious over his homophobic comments after the Orlando nightclub shooting. Pastor Steven Anderson was spouting his anti-gay message on a Botswana radio station when immigration officers entered the studios and escorted him out on Sept. 20, according to the radio station’s news report. The Botswana government announced via Twitter that Anderson was now considered a “prohibited immigrant.”
Anderson was banned from entering South Africa last week after the country’s government decided that his sermons amounted to hate speech. South Africa’s LGBTQI community began lobbying the government soon after Anderson’s comments over the Orlando nightclub shooting made headlines. Botswana’s LGBTQI community also lobbied their government, but failed to stop Anderson from entering the country last week.
“I feel sorry for people who live in South Africa, but thank God we still have a wide open door in Botswana,” Anderson said after hearing about his ban from South Africa.
Anderson was allowed to preach in Botswana and open a local branch of his church, even after a scuffle with protestors, the preacher said in a YouTube post. But his comments on Botswana’s radio station GabzFM proved too much. Anderson said that Botswana’s citizens clearly struggled with alcoholism and “drunkenness,” and that religious leaders were “toothless” who allowed women to preach and relied on translated Bibles that were “corrupted pieces of junk” when compared to the King James version. He again repeated his views that gay people should be killed. As the breakfast show wrapped, agents were waiting for Anderson to escort him away.
more
http://qz.com/786419/botswana-deports-controversial-pastor-steven-anderson-notorius-for-his-homophobic-comments-on-the-orlando-nightclub-shooting/
taking out the trash...
Don’t Blame Millennials for This Scarily Close Election. Blame Baby Boomers.
BY BRIAN BEUTLER
Sixteen years since Bush v. Gore, Florida still looms large in the liberal imagination as the epicenter of the vote-counting crisis that wrongly handed an election to one of the worst presidents in American history—a symbolic reminder of the importance of vigilance in campaign combat. The state is no longer the bellwether of the Democratic Party’s political fortunes it once was, but in this election, it is part of a firewall that will make it very hard for Donald Trump to become president even if national polls remain close. Maintaining a healthy lead in Florida, in other words, is critical to liberal sanity.
Cue panic. As if liberals needed more sources of anxiety, the polls are particularly close in Florida right now. A New York Times Upshot poll, which was based on voter records in the same way campaigns conduct their internal polls, finds Hillary Clinton leading 41-40 in a four-way race, and tied 43-43 in a head-to-head race against Trump.
Even if it proves fleeting, the mortifying resemblance to 2000, provides a backdrop for Clinton’s increasingly warm and concerted courtship of young voters and of an increasing sense of alarm among Trump foes that millennials, through apathy or self-satisfied third-party voting, could tip the presidency into his hands.
I will address at another time the millennial generation’s role in keeping this election uncomfortably close. But as long as we’re going to play generational blame games for the possible destruction of American democracy, the Upshot’s data makes clear who bears it. Looking at the graph below, I see only one generation so selfish and entitled that they’d disappoint their parents, children, and grandchildren—and it isn’t millennials.
more
https://newrepublic.com/article/136928/dont-blame-millennials-scarily-close-election-blame-baby-boomers
Vandalism at the Iconic Racetrack in Death Valley National Park
A trip last weekend to the iconic Death Valley Racetrack Playa has left me with a burning need to write, and unfortunately it is because of the worst kind of people.
My mission was to capture some specific images of the Racetrack for a project. I made haste to get there as soon as I could before it got too hot. It is after all summer, and I wanted to get up to 3700ft before the main valley hit 110. It was in the upper 90?s when I finally started upon Racetrack Road. Oh Racetrack Road, you are still as bad as ever. Those 27 miles are always a relief when they are over.
Finally, the Racetrack came into view. I was blissfully ignorant of what horrors were hidden from view at this distance. What follows is a mix of iPhone and Sony shots taken between 9/11/16 afternoon and 9/12/16 morning.
The Racetrack is a very special place. There are only two known places on the Earth where rocks move on their own across a lake bed. How they move was a mystery until 2014 when a couple of researchers finally witnessed it. The conditions have to be perfect, and those conditions might not happen for years between events. This is because, of course, Death Valley is a very dry place, which leads us to why the Racetrack itself is so fragile.
more
http://petapixel.com/2016/09/19/vandalism-iconic-racetrack-death-valley-national-park/
F'in Bastards...
Confirming Big Pharma Fears, Study Suggests Medical Marijuana Laws Decrease Opioid Use
Lauren McCauley, staff writer
It is of little wonder that Big Pharma has been exposed actively undermining efforts to legalize marijuana, after new research on Thursday found a drop in the use of opioid painkillers in that states that allow people to treat pain with good, ol' Mary Jane.
The study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, examined data on traffic fatalities in 18 states and analyzed the cases in which the presence of opioids was detected. In states that had operational medical marijuana laws, which included either "allowances for home cultivation or active dispensaries," the Columbia University researchers found "a significant reduction in opioid positivity for drivers aged 21 to 40 years."
Thus, the researchers concluded that such laws "may reduce opioid use and overdose."
"We would expect the adverse consequences of opioid use to decrease over time in states where medical marijuana use is legal, as individuals substitute marijuana for opioids in the treatment of severe or chronic pain," explained lead author June H. Kim, a doctoral student in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health.
more
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/09/16/confirming-big-pharma-fears-study-suggests-medical-marijuana-laws-decrease-opioid
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